March 12, 2010 / April 12, 2010

Report & Artwork by: Lynora

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123 Pleasant St.
Morgantown, West Virginia

Sunday - March 7, 2010

BANDS:
12th Confession
Solarburn
Liecus
Byzantine

And then, watching hydrogen convert to helium, I squinted to shield my eyes from the Sun, watching life unfold. I smiled, because Guerilla Warfare was the only phrase I could find to explain what I was witnessing.

Guerilla Warfare: type of warfare fought by irregulars in fast-moving, brutal, small-scale actions against orthodox forces and, on occasion, against rival insurgent forces. “Over the centuries the practitioners of guerilla warfare have been called rebels, irregulars, insurgents, partisans, and mercenaries. Frustrated military commanders have consistently damned them as barbarians, savages, terrorists, brigands, outlaws, and bandits.” ("guerrilla warfare. (n.d.). © Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc..  .")

Surrounded by rebels, irregulars, insurgents, bandits, barbarians, and mercenaries, “Absolute Horizon” began, and the crowd moved how I only saw it in my mind.  It was indescribable, as if my dream of people swinging from the rafters was of this exact moment.  Finally, I could step back and watch it all.  The pit was reeling, and I had never seen such an intense pit be somehow so not violent.  Everyone smiled at each other; it was like we all knew some intimate secret together.  “Slipping on Noise,” one of Byzantine’s best, cranked out next, and I realized I was stuck for words as I heard him growl the title line of their first album.

Byzantine

Byzantine Reunion Show - 2010

I didn't get a chance to know my grandma's younger brother, Jimmy.  But when he was sixteen, Jimmy and his friend stole his dad's car.  They drove west, picking up hitchhikers who could pay for gas or give them some food.  They picked up a sailor with a pie, and if I remember correctly, he stuck with them for a while after. Well, we live in New York-- Jimmy made it to Colorado. It was somewhere around here that he, the friend, and the sailor tried to steal a cow. They were hungry, and had consumed all of their pie and money.  The plan was to push the cow off of the steep hill with the convertible, taking the scattered meat. Ultimately it was this cow plan that got them caught.  His father, Monserate, had to go out with the other boys father to pick them up in Wyoming.  Monserate saw the newspapers when he arrived; the front cover belonged to his son.  It read: Go West Young Men.

In the West, I stood with my hand inside the fundamental component filling the tank behind the toilet.  As I was in the motel aloft a massive green hill overlooking Morgantown, I clenched my cold fingers around the top of the black flapper valve, tugging at the piece remaining beneath the broken chain. The days of travel through West Virginia previous to this had been a series of ridiculous moments like this, but none so literally cold.  I heard the loud flush, and cursed as I watched the questionable tank water draining around my hand.

When we went to the car, I made a beeline to the front desk.  After going beneath the canary yellow arch, I entered through the flimsy whitewash and glass front door. There stood the old woman who had checked us in. She was pale, with dyed blonde hair, wrinkles from years of smoking and stress, plain clothes, a nervous look, and that unbearable looking black eye.  Gently tell her, I thought.  As Odin did, I felt my body hang upside-down, my cares cascading from my pockets; she was the proof to me to shut up and be thankful.  Dark purple and blue, that black eye looked back to me unsettlingly.

"Hey," I started with a smile. "Let me start by saying, I love my room," we were on Don Knotts Boulevard, perched above the river, "But! I believe the toilet isn't working. The chain is broken and I have to stick my hand in the back and manually lift it."

"Oh! I wouldn't like my room if I had to stick my hand inside the toilet." she said laughing to appease me.

"It's ok, this is the nicest place I've stayed in, in a few days!" Wasn't that the truth, "I'm going to a show, down the hill," my Nana used to sneak out her window and go to the dances down the hill, maybe today I would dance with the boys --just a different sort of dance. I told the woman I'd be back after the show and thanked her.

I slunk down the mountain like a great serpent carrying celestial bodies across the sky. The Mayans believed giant serpents were the black bodies in between the Stars in the night sky, carrying them from place to place in the firmament. The serpent that carried me down to West Virginia was the best trash metal band to come out in the past 15 years, Byzantine.

As the broken toilet emptied, my mind wandered.  For years, the image sat in the back of my mind and every time I heard the line "Swing from the Rafters" I saw it.  It was the ideal of what a metal show should be, the crowd on top of itself, clinging to the walls, swinging from the rafters, shouting back to the band on stage.  Everyone was one body though there were so many.  For a long while I have searched for it, and I was starting to believe that there was nothing out there that would execute this wondrous vision of disorder.

Taking my hand out of the toilet water, I unwrapped the silver bright wrapper with the pink rose on it, rubbing the hard soap all over my hands; my bundle was inside on the bed, but my dog had wandered from my feet.

© 2010 Lynora Conti

© 2010 Lynora Conti

I arrived for the interview and when I left the club with their bassist, Michael "Skip" Cromer, it was dark out already. The sun had set and the Stars were starting to peek beneath the navy sky. We sat and talked, and my eyes were open to so many things.  OJ called towards the end of the interview and Skip asked if I wanted to continue the interview at their hotel.  I saw the river ahead of me, with the Moon overhead; there was only one direction to go in. My intuition said stay, but I trusted myself to the river. "Sure, we can finish this there."

After conducting interviews with Skip, OJ, and Wolfe, I went back into 123 Pleasant Street.  Wasn't that the truth of it! It looked like a hidden room you stumbled into in a dream.  A tiny chandelier that belonged in an old tavern hung overhead with black filigree. The club was built with rich brown wood.  Sometimes it looked like the inside of a pub, and other times like the interior to a dark barn.  Bar tables were beside me.  One long thin countertop lined the walls.  A few women and a man stood up on them wanting to get a clear view of what may have been the last Byzantine show.  I saw the girls standing up along the walls and the crowd we pushed into.  "We [stood] together, the mountain and me," until the lights went down, and came back up lighting the stage like the Sun.

Byzantine

Photo courtesy of  John Konz

If you were to line up Byzantine’s albums chrono-logically, they could serve as a huge metaphor for all of creation.  The Fundamental Component, the origin of all life …And they Shall take of Serpents, which is where man, civilization, and religion comes into play, and Oblivion Beckons, where the world has ended and now truly everything ends in all of space.  While the themes are more hinged around man in all of the albums, the three do seem to explore this most broad and serious cycle of all of life.

Byzantine's earlier album was true to its title.  It was like water.  It was fundamental and pure.  You could thrive off of it as long as it was in supply, it could have sustained civilization.  Though the album was more strictly about man being the fundamental component to its own destruction, The Fundamental Component more directly translated to a refreshing pool of new music that quenched ones thirst for true quality.  It was the start of life, and it felt like it.

Byzantine

Photo courtesy of John Konz

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